Athenae, Bigotry, Faith

To Argue My Faith

This asshole:

Of course it’s just regular old white bigotry, and nothing to do with Christianity at all, but what interests me immensely is this woman’s all-too-common misconception that having “faith” in something means you’re above reproach, you don’t have to back your shit up, you you get to say or do whatever you want and nobody can criticize you.

“I don’t want to argue my faith,” she says, when asked how her faith dictates this stance that mixed-race marriages can’t be performed in her banquet hall.

Oh, honey, does Yahweh have some bad news for you. Nowhere in the Bible, even at its cruelest, does God proffer Himself as some kind of Ultimate Win, a card you can pull out to avoid having to do what everybody in a society has to do which is to live together. In fact, the Old Testament God to which these people often ascribe their beliefs does pretty much nothing but argue, constantly, with everybody He wants to do His stuff.

Literally half the damn Bible is God just screwing with everybody, I honestly don’t understand how people come to this conclusion that He doesn’t like conflict.

You don’t get to be an idiot and call it faith. You don’t get to take a position contrary to the law of the land and call it faith. You don’t get to be unable to cite chapter, much less verse, to justify your attitude and call it faith. It’s insulting to those who don’t believe, of course: We are not a theocracy, not yet, and your faith cannot stand above anyone else’s.

But it’s also insulting to those WITH that Christian faith, faith they work for, study, practice, struggle with, try to understand. It’s insulting to them to say that their faith is something this cheap, this easy. It’s insulting to say to people who work every day to model Christ in an unkind violent bullshit world that you don’t have to ARGUE.

I can’t speak for this tight-permed Trump voter up there, but my faith? My faith is very, very deeply about argument. My faith is at times looking upward and saying Heavenly Father, You are being such a Jackass right now, what on Your earth are you thinking. My faith is cantankerous and oppositional and mostly about work, about what can I do to help, how can I fix this, how can we change this together. The idea of faith being something you don’t have to fight for is anathema.

You don’t want to argue your faith? What on earth is your life, then, if not an argument? What are you doing here? Besides racism, I mean.

A.

2 thoughts on “To Argue My Faith”

  2. My religion, which is mine, requires me to plant a sharp ax in the noggin of annoying christianists.

    But I put my Valhalla-creds at risk every fncking day, for “civility” & shit.

    So I’ve got two questions to MAGAt-christianists:
    “Do you think your deity would be proud of you?”
    and,
    “What side you you part your hair on?”

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